


As Abraham

by kriari (kadielkrieger)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-18
Updated: 2010-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadielkrieger/pseuds/kriari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel knows that Michael will come for him. (5.18 Coda)</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Abraham

**Author's Note:**

> I must ~~blame~~ first thank [elizah_jane](http://elizah-jane.livejournal.com) for telling me to STFU and stop trying to talk myself out of writing it and just spend the time writing it instead.

There's blood in his mouth again, on his hands and dripping into widening pools against the earth - not all of it his own. None of it his own, in truth, but lately it has become simpler to forget than dwell. It sloughs off his chest in a flurry of russet-colored flakes that scatter on the wind and flit across the grass between his feet before they disappear. The skin beneath begins to knit slowly together, pale and whole as he pushes the series of buttons back through their holes.

Luck is all that bore him through in the end, and history - his intimate knowledge of the tactics his brethren employ, how best to subvert their soldier's mentality and turn it to his favor. After all, he was one of them, once. He remembers and in his way, misses them and their simple certainties, their blind devotion. It was easier to be as he was always meant to be.

That does not make it right or righteous. So even in the face of Dean's perfidy, he will still toe this new line because he believes in something beyond his Father now, beyond Dean. He believes their path is true and just and that if they do not stand between humanity and Lucifer's army, no one will. He _believes_.

He also knows better than to rely on divine intervention. That way has been closed to them and though he knows the emotions he harbors in the face of that desertion make him all the more human, he finds he's unable to set them aside any more than he is able to fully grasp them.

Dean, he can at least understand if not forgive.

The sun marches onward to the horizon trailing streamers of pink and orange and gold, and Castiel waits for Michael.

The park is nearly deserted at this hour, the bench beneath him tacky and green with what must be a fresh coat of paint. Castiel would know it anywhere, just as he will always know the scar he laid on the land when he pulled Dean from the Pit.

Even changed in a million minute ways, it is still the same town, the same park, that exists for no reason at all beyond Dean's stubbornness. There's an unfamiliar tightness between his ribs, a seething dark hollow he might even call grief at the loss of that man, the one who stood tall in the face of an archangel's wrath with a sneer.

By now he will be fully gone and Michael dispatched to clean up Raphael's mess. Castiel refuses to endanger Sam and Bobby, or force them to watch Dean take him apart. So he will wait.

A voice pulls him from his contemplation, high and sharp, obviously female. "Hey, mister! Heads up!"

He only has time to separate the outline of a lanky shadow from the encroaching darkness before a ball strikes him squarely in the shoulder. In his haste and distraction, he had forgotten to shield himself. The damage has already been done though and so he focuses on making himself clean before the shadow draws close enough to see. She should not have to. Dean would-

It doesn't matter how Dean would feel.

His injuries are too great to blink away anymore and he feels the unfamiliar weight of time push against his efforts, slowing the process down enough to leave the left side of his face covered in blood, his grace tattered there but thankfully contained. Mere moments pass before he finds himself staring at the scuffed toes of her sneakers.

"Oh. Crap. Are you okay?" she asks, and Castiel barely swallows the bitter laugh that presses in his chest.

"I'm fine," he says instead and reaches out to hand her the ball.

Her brows pull together, her chin squared as she steadfastly ignores the offering. It reminds him of Dean.

She is so very young - twelve at the most - Castiel doesn't have the experience with children to correctly pin it down, but she seems younger than Claire. He could find the answer if he wanted, crawl inside her head until he produced the memory of her last birthday. He could count the candles on the cake and discover what color her dress was. In the long run it doesn't matter. There are sweat tracks cut into the dust on her face. Her knees are scabbed over with a patchwork quilt of bruises and scrapes. Large chunks of bright red hair riot at her temples and across her forehead where they've escaped from the tight braid flung over her shoulder.

She shines so very brightly - so pure and perfect it makes Castiel wonder how such a beautiful work of complicated art could come into being by chance.

The bench gives ever so slightly when she throws herself at it and eases down into a careless sprawl. "Don't look fine," she says, "I've got a phone that my Momma gave me just in case. You could call a doctor."

Castiel wipes his hand through the blood still splashed across his cheek to reveal the tiny slice of broken skin he couldn't get closed in time and looks down at her.

"That won't be necessary," he says.

"Suit yourself," She shrugs, snaps her gum and then smiles around the giant blue blob lodged between her teeth. Two of them are missing. "I'm Libby," she chimes and thrusts her hand out at him.

Castiel takes it on impulse, has seen Dean do it enough times now to understand it's meant to be a greeting. Her hands are sticky and his bloody and the angle awkward because they're sitting next to one another, but he shakes it all the same and commits her name to memory as one more reason to persevere.

She shouldn't be here, can't be here when Michael comes as he inevitably will, but Castiel doesn't know how to send her away beyond putting her to sleep and flying her home. The thought has crossed his mind three times since Libby sat down and yet every time he reaches out to touch his fingers to her forehead, he loses focus and can't make the body behave.

"Whatcha doin'?" she asks, legs swinging idly, heels kicking up swirling cyclones of dust as a series of sharp crackling noises spill out of her mouth again.

"Waiting," he answers, weighing his dwindling options quickly. Were he of a right mind, he would have left before she ever sat down. Now he feels trapped and happy to be so. It's unsettling.

Her fingers prod at the cut above his eyebrow curiously and Castiel does manage to move away then, if only by inches.

"For who?"

Castiel considers the question carefully before deciding to give her the truth. Perhaps it will help break whatever spell this Libby has cast on him. "My brother. He's...angry with me for not performing my duties." The child nods as if she understands the full scope of what he has said, what he hasn't, but then she may simply have experience. Castiel rarely reads humans well, though not for a lack of trying. "You should go home before he comes. He's not known for his mercy."

"Big brothers are like that sometimes," she says and drops her hand back into her lap, her fingers threaded together, clenching and unclenching like they want to close into tiny fists. "Is he the one that beat you up?"

"No. They. It was someone else."

Castiel casts his gaze out across the spread of the park, bent blades of grass, the soaring stands of trees and the sliver of sun still visible above them. It will be fully dark soon. Certainly, Michael will come then. Libby must go.

"Anyway, shouldn't your Dad be the one making sure your chores get done?" She reaches out, snatches the ball out of his grip, cups it lightly between her palms as if it were something precious.

When Castiel finally meets her eyes they are wide and golden brown, unflinching even under the scrutiny of an adult and stranger. A light flicks on behind him, sodium vapour humming to life before it pops and smokes, fizzling back down to darkness. The other park lights escape such an unfortunate fate.

Yes, of course, he wants to tell her. Of course my Father should be the one to mete out justice and issue orders. Of course He should be the one and only one to untangle the mess his children have made. Of course.

"He abandoned us," Castiel says and can hear the sorrow, the quiet rage carved into each word even if she cannot. "Left us on our own. Burdened us all with things we should not have to carry."

Libby tosses the ball from hand to hand, rolls it across the backs of her knuckles before she sighs and pounds it once against her thigh.

"Family never asks more of us than we have to give," she says and kicks off the bench, flecks of green paint clinging to the back of her knees and the worn-through pockets of her jean shorts. "Maybe there's a reason he's letting you find your own way."

The stars begin to wink on in the heavens and Castiel stares at her, the solemn set of her mouth twisting into the smallest of smiles as she backs slowly away, unnaturally surefooted on the irregular ground.

She turns her face to the sky and breathes once, a deep draw that Castiel would swear he can feel filling his own lungs with the taste of night and spring, the thunderheads forming three-hundred miles off, the daffodils pushing silently up through the earth.

"I don't think your brother's coming after all," she says, and her eyes sparkle when they find his again.

This time he easily catches the ball that flies at his chest. He looks down at it, the innocuous bundle of leather and twine bound together with red stitching. It is so mundane and yet so alien he's unexpectedly fascinated by it.

Her voice rises a final time, a bold counterpoint to the wind that gusts around his ankles, flapping the tail of his trench coat against the metal legs of the bench.

"Everyone has to grow up sometime, Castiel," she says, and when he glances up she's already gone.


End file.
